


something wild about you

by thisnoise



Category: Marvel (Comics), Silk (Comics), Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Noir, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 12:59:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15886554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisnoise/pseuds/thisnoise
Summary: Cindy Moon turned up at Felicia’s office one evening  in a pale blue shirtwaist dress and fresh makeup, a fair approximation of a respectable working girl, but Felicia knew better. No amount of typing ever gave anyone those taut forearms, or the reddened knuckles that appeared when she pulled her gloves off.“I want you to find my family,” she said. “My parents, my baby brother. They just--vanished, into thin air.”





	something wild about you

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing to do with Spider-Man Noir, the canon AU. Comics is weird.
> 
> With thanks to Mai and Bandit for betaing the absolute stuffing out of this.

“I’m telling you I saw him,” says Cindy, perched on the edge of Felicia’s desk.

Sure, Felicia believes that Cindy thinks she saw her brother, but practically speaking that doesn’t get them too far. She’s more concerned with the blood leaking through Cindy’s sleeve; bleeding clients are probably bad for business. “Let me look at your arm, would you?”

Hell, maybe he was there. Maybe Felicia should have spotted him too, but she was too distracted by the spectacle of Cindy Moon at work in a dirt ring, methodically pulping a man twice her size.

What she did see was Cindy flinch, distracted by something outside the ring, and take a blow square in the face. What she saw was Cindy’s opponent hit the ground a split second later, out cold--and Cindy, heading directly for a table full of drunk bottom-feeding gangsters.

And _that’s_ when the shooting started.

The whole night seems a little surreal now. Cindy is back in drab day clothes, soft cotton blouse and tweed skirt, but one side of her face is turning a beautiful array of colors. Her bobbed hair, normally twisted out of the way, is coming unpinned. She doesn’t look like the one who flipped somebody head over heels with a single punch.

Not even as she pops the buttons of her blouse open and drops it on the desk, with all the ease of someone who boxes in a bathing suit a few nights a week.

“He was six the last time you saw him,” Felicia goes on, rummaging in a drawer. She comes up with bandages and half a bottle of cheap gin; it’ll do. “A glimpse in a crowd--”

“I know my own brother,” says Cindy, but she sounds resigned, like she knows she’s being humored. She jumps and sucks in a breath, poise vanishing, as Felicia takes her arm.

Felicia eyes the bullet graze, still trickling blood. “Most people who hire me? It’s because they want me to do the dangerous parts for them. I’m not usually the sanest person in this room.”

Cindy doesn’t dignify that with a response, aside from a yelp of pain when Felicia wipes the blood away. She doesn’t seem too uncomfortable after that, but she grumbles and fidgets while Felicia cleans her up. 

“Just hold still for me, would you?” She touches Cindy’s unbruised cheek. “Aren’t you used to this?”

Cindy shrugs. The fine silver chain she always wears shifts around her neck, and Felicia sees for the first time that there’s a small key on it, hanging low on her breastbone. “Usually I take care of it myself.”

Felicia knew about this side of Cindy’s life, sure, but seeing it up close is really spinning her around. “You must have some interesting scars,” she says, trying to concentrate. Cindy is warm and close, and she won’t stop shifting around under Felicia’s hands. “In some interesting places.”

“Don’t you?” Cindy finally goes still, probably because Felicia’s put one hand on her knee.

Felicia smooths down the edges of the tape. “There you are. Good as new.”

“What, aren’t you going to kiss it better while you’re there?”

“If you insist.” Felicia kisses her shoulder, light enough to pass off as a joke.

“Better try again.” Cindy’s tone is light, or trying to be, but her eyes are intent on Felicia’s face. “Just to be sure it heals up, you know?”

Felicia lingers this time, kissing Cindy’s collarbone and then--what the hell--the softer slope of her chest. “Better?” 

“Much,” says Cindy, breath coming quicker. She’s sure not brooding any more. “Miss Hardy--”

Felicia looks up at her incredulously, even as she eases the strap of Cindy’s brassiere down past the bandage on her shoulder. “Yes, Miss Moon?”

Cindy’s smile is shaky. “Felicia,” she breathes. “Don’t stop.” Her knee jumps under Felicia’s hand; her nipple tightens under Felicia’s tongue. “Oh, God--”

Felicia sucks lazily, and a desperate noise cracks out of Cindy’s throat as she shifts against the desk. “I said stay still,” Felicia says, amused, putting her other hand on Cindy’s other knee. When she looks up, Cindy’s clutching white-knuckled at the edge of the desk. Her face is flushed, her gaze dark and dreamy, even through the bruises. “Good God,” says Felicia. “You should see yourself.”

“I knew it.” Cindy wets her lips. “The way you looked at me, right from the start, like--”

Felicia crowds her against the desk and nips at her throat, hands smoothing up her thighs. Cindy is shivering so beautifully for her already. “Like what?”

“Like you wanted to do something filthy to me on top of your desk.”

Felicia snaps her garter against her thigh, not too hard. Cindy laughs and kisses her, diving right in like she’s been waiting much longer than they’ve known each other. “Can I--?” She tugs at the belt holding Felicia’s blouse closed.

“Not yet,” says Felicia, even though she’s aching to have Cindy’s hands all over her. Cindy may be all muscle and half-healed scrapes and bruises, but she’s melting so sweetly, knees falling open as Felicia inches her skirt up to her hips. She deserves Felicia’s full attention. “Shh, let me do this for you.”

“All right.” Cindy looks faintly wary, like there might be a trick in this somewhere. But she hooks a knee over Felicia’s hip and both arms around her neck, kissing her at length, wholly open to her. Her eyes slide shut, hips rocking forward as Felicia teases her open and presses two fingers into her. “Oh, that’s nice. Felicia, please--”

Felicia winds her up nice and steady from there, one hand gripping Cindy’s flexing thigh to hold her open while Cindy’s nails dig into the back of Felicia’s neck. Her choked cries build until she has to muffle them against Felicia’s shoulder, hot gasps prickling against her neck.

Felicia is wound up in her, utterly captivated. She’s almost startled when her thumb teases just the right way and Cindy arches against her and shouts, her body clutching at Felicia’s fingers as she shudders and finally relaxes.

Felicia wants a moment to survey the wreck she’s made of her, but instead Cindy kisses her, and that’s even better--lazy and full of warm promise. 

“Guess I needed that.” Cindy still sounds dazed, but she makes quick work of opening the front of Felicia’s pants. “You’re so beautiful,” she says. “Too beautiful. It isn’t fair,” and hell, it’s not like Felicia doesn’t know exactly how she looks. But it’s something else to hear Cindy say it like that, hoarsely earnest. 

It’s more awkward this way around, and Cindy fumbles to find a rhythm, but Felicia’s too heated to stop and undress properly. Once they’re moving together it’s perfect--Cindy kissing her dizzy, fingers circling just where Felicia urgently needs them--and she clutches the edge of the desk to keep her knees from buckling as pure heat swells in her. She remembers, suddenly and vividly, that Cindy knocked a man out cold with this same hand barely an hour ago, and her peak takes her by surprise.

She wobbles forward and Cindy catches her; they breathe together for a moment before Felicia kisses Cindy’s shoulder one more time. “How does it feel?”

Cindy’s lips twitch. “Never better, but maybe you should come home with me. Just to be safe.”

“Can’t you take care of yourself?”

“Oh, I can.” Cindy laughs--a little nervously, Felicia thinks. “But you should come home with me anyway.”

It’s a bad idea, but Felicia specializes in those.

\-------

They make it home all right, out of their clothes and into Cindy’s bed, but it’s been a hell of a long night already, and Cindy dozes off between one kiss and the next, fingers going slack against Felicia’s shoulders. Felicia considers being offended, but she’s too tired; she shifts away and closes her own eyes.

She wakes up a few hours later to the first gray of dawn, Cindy still fast asleep with an arm around her waist. Felicia lies there for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling.

She doesn’t usually sleep with clients--not out of any concern for professional ethics, but because pretty much anyone loses their appeal once you spend some time digging through their dirt. There’s something different here, though, with Cindy; Felicia wants to know more of her, and then more, and more. This feels like something she could fall into and never escape, and that’s the last thing she needs.

For now, she slips out of bed and goes looking for the bathroom. She’s never been here before, only to Cindy’s deserted childhood home, so when she tries the next door down she hardly expects it to open onto a yawning black gap.

Stairs? In an apartment?

Felicia glances back down the hall to the bedroom; then she descends into the dark, trailing one finger along the wall. There’s no puff of dust from under her feet; someone’s been making this trip recently. She goes down and down, three flights by her count, to another door.

This door, too, is unlocked--but it’s heavy, and Felicia is hardly a weakling. It swings open smoothly but slowly when she pushes, and then the lights flicker on of their own accord.

The walls are all solid steel, like one of the wartime bunkers that everyone built in a panic and never used, but this place is battered--unmistakably lived-in. It’s dusty now, but the bed in the corner is rumpled, the mountain of cheap paperbacks in the corner are dog-eared. There are shallow dents clustered on the metal walls, and she thinks, absurdly, of cannon fire.

Felicia runs her fingers over the deadbolt, which is almost comically heavy. She’s about to step into the room and look around further when Cindy says, behind her: “What are you doing down here?”

Felicia turns in the doorway and looks up the stairs towards her. She’s put on a pajama shirt and no pants, which is particularly distracting from below. “What is this?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Cindy says in a small voice.

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” Felicia stares at Cindy, and then at the prison cell behind them. “Who was locked in here?”

“If it mattered, I would’ve told you about it!” If there was any chance this place is nothing to do with Cindy, that kills it; she looks scared out of her mind.

Felicia knew there was a piece she was missing, but this is something big; she can’t see where it fits. “What are you paying me for, if not to decide what’s relevant?”

“I can’t talk about it. I _can’t._ ” Cindy shudders and pulls herself back together. “Anyway, nobody asked you to come here and, and snoop around like this.”

“What?” Felicia sputters. “That’s _exactly_ what you--”

“Then forget it!” says Cindy shrilly. “You should go. You should go right now. You’re fired.”

“So what about your parents? Your precious baby brother?”

“I can find them on my own,” says Cindy. She won’t meet Felicia’s eyes. “I don’t need your help.”

It’s so patently absurd that Felicia stares at her for a few seconds, waiting for this conversation to make sense. It doesn’t work. “Sure you don’t, honey,” she says finally. “That’s why you were paying me so much.” She makes sure to bump Cindy’s shoulder on her way back up the stairs. “Best of luck to you.”

She can’t help it if her clients make bad decisions; it’s nothing to her either way. Nothing at all.

\-------

By day, Cindy Moon works in the typing pool at the Daily Bugle. Felicia knows this because she knows the Bugle photographer who referred Cindy to Black Cat Investigations. She turned up at Felicia’s office one evening a few weeks ago in a pale blue shirtwaist dress and fresh makeup, a fair approximation of a respectable working girl, but Felicia knew better. No amount of typing ever gave anyone those taut forearms, or the reddened knuckles that appeared when she pulled her gloves off.

Pretty face, strong hands--even then Felicia felt an unprofessional flutter. She lingered in a handshake a few moments too long before Miss Moon took her hand back and sat down.

“I want you to find my family,” she said. “My parents, my baby brother. They just--vanished, into thin air.”

“How long ago?”

Miss Moon mumbled her answer.

“I’m sorry?” said Felicia.

“Somewhere between one and eleven years?” said Miss Moon, pained like she was confessing a sin, and that was when Felicia was hooked whether she wanted to be or not.

\-------

At the time, Cindy spun her a tale about going to Canada for ten years, trying to make her fortune playing ladies’ ice hockey. She was more than happy to talk about her parents, and to let Felicia have a look around their dusty old house, but notably vague about how she’d completely lost touch with them. Felicia’s been treading water on it until now.

She’s been thinking about that key Cindy wears around her neck, and about that steel bunker in her basement--the one that locked from the inside. It’s not hard to guess where Cindy really spent those ten years, but it sure as hell doesn’t clear anything else up. She resents Cindy for dragging her into this, whatever it is, and then leaving her without any answers. She resents herself even more, for giving a damn.

So she doesn’t know whether she’s relieved when Cindy shows up at her door again---though it’s at home this time. It’s late, and Felicia’s had a couple of drinks and is thinking about going to bed; she sighs when she looks through the peephole, and lets Cindy knock a few extra times before opening the door.

“I’m sorry,” Cindy says immediately. “I wasn’t fair to you. Can I explain?”

“Don’t worry, I got your check in the mail. All just business, right?” Felicia takes a step back, hand on the doorknob.

“Felicia,” Cindy begins, a ragged plea, and doesn’t seem to know how to continue.

“I said I don’t want to hear it.” Felicia pulls her inside and kisses her just to shut her up, biting at her lip so neither of them forgets how angry she is. Cindy’s hands push into her robe, and she lets it drop to the floor.

It’s a mistake, of course; it takes the edge off her anger, wrings the worst of it out of her. She’s still furious afterwards, when they’re sprawled together on the bed gasping their breath back, but it’s only a low nasty simmer in her gut. 

Felicia disentangles herself and gets up, pulling her robe back on and knotting the belt with a vicious jerk. “If there’s anything you want to tell me, you’d better say it now, before I get my wits back.”

“Fine.” Cindy takes one more deep breath, bracing herself. “My mother was a biochemist. Is, I guess, wherever she--” She swallows and looks away, sitting up to gather her clothes while she talks. “After I learned to type in high school, I had to go to her lab after school and type her notes. She said it was educational, but really no one else could read her handwriting.” She pauses, midway through hooking her bra back on. “Look, I don’t want you to think--we were scared. We were all so scared.”

“Just spit it out,” says Felicia, exasperated. “For God’s sake.”

Cindy prods at her own thigh, where a fresh bite mark is blooming. “There was an accident in the lab. I was seventeen, and oh, hell, just look--”

She springs up off the floor, as fast as a puppet jerked on strings; twists neatly in midair and settles on the ceiling overhead, stuck by her fingers and toes like an insect.

“What the hell.” Felicia sits down on the edge of the bed, staring up at her. And here she thought nothing could surprise her in this city any more. “What the _hell_?”

“That’s pretty much how I felt,” says Cindy, and fills it in as best she can: the freak spider that bit her, the way she changed afterwards, day by day, into something other than human. Her family, unsure whether to be frightened of her or for her. The strange doctor who appeared from nowhere one day, somehow knowing all about it, who told them that Cindy was dangerous; that her presence was making her family unsafe, that she might hurt people, or people might come for her.

“I believed him,” she says. “Why shouldn’t I? I could have snapped Charles Atlas like a twig, webbing came out of my hands--back then there was no Captain America. No Torches, no Spitfire. There was nobody like me at all, and we didn’t know what was happening. I could have turned into a five-foot spider for all we knew.”

“So you locked yourself in,” says Felicia. She’s too fascinated to be angry any longer.

“I thought I was protecting them! I thought, if I was gone, nothing would happen to them. But it still happened, whatever it was, and I wasn’t there to stop it.”

To Felicia, it sounds like exactly what that doctor was after, but professional input isn’t what Cindy wants right now. “Who else knows?”

Cindy shrugs. It looks strange upside down, and Felicia wishes she’d come back down from the ceiling. “You, me, my family. My mother’s lab assistant was there, but I trust him, I’m sure of that.”

This, too, Felicia sets aside to address later. “You didn’t have to tell me.”

“Of course I did,” says Cindy, softer. “You’re taking it pretty well.” She sounds suspicious, but it seems she’s got good reason for it.

“It’s like you said--the world got strange while you were away. But oh, honey.” Felicia smiles, quick and rueful. “What kind of minefield did you get me into here?”

“You don’t have to take the case back,” says Cindy hastily. She means it, too; she’s thinking, clear as day, that she’s carried this load alone this far, and she can go on alone if she has to.

It’s too bad Felicia’s so contrary by nature.

She stares up at Cindy, still keeping her distance up there, and wonders at her--this sweet-faced blunt force weapon of a woman. Someone should try being kind to her once in a while. “Sweetheart, this won't work if you keep hiding things from me.”

Cindy doesn’t get it for a second. Then she laughs with relief and flips back off the ceiling to land right in Felicia’s lap, light as a feather. “Thank you.”

“Cute,” says Felicia, but she can’t help laughing with her. Her arms are somehow already around Cindy’s waist. 

Cindy cups Felicia’s face in both hands and kisses her fervently. “Thank you,” she says again, almost a sigh. She seems lighter somehow, more relaxed than Felicia’s ever seen her. This is the woman Felicia glimpsed before, in the single heartbeat between when a man blacked Cindy’s eye and when he crumpled to the ground.

For the first time tonight, she notices fully that Cindy’s black eye, a sprawling purple stain a few days ago, is already a faint green shadow; the graze on her arm is gone altogether. A hell of a trick.

Felicia kisses Cindy’s cheekbone, just where the bruise was, hands flexing against Cindy’s hips. Her own secret itches there, a prickle in her palms and at the back of her skull, and she wonders if she did this to herself. If despite her best efforts, her own magic brought Cindy and all her glorious chaos into Felicia’s life.

She wonders, with luck this good, just how ugly things will get when it all backfires on them.


End file.
